They say necessity is the mother of all inventions and learning experiences, I too am no different from that. Sometimes we learn good things and sometimes we learn the bad things also. OK! OK! before I turn preachy let me say that what all this article is about. It is about creating smaller sized videos for internet sharing and more than one movie in a single 700 MB CD.
The intresting story behind this new learning experience is driven by my passion for this Nagarjuna & Tabu starrer Telugu movie - "Ninne Pelladtha". It was released when I was on my first year of Engg and I saw it with my Andhra friends only to fell in love with that movie instantly. I have been searching for the VCD of that movie for a very long time in Chennai & Coimbatore, but I accidentaly found it here in a video library. While taking a copy there was this problem that second VCD couldn't be copied because of larger size than a conventional CD. So I had to find out ways to compress it and to my amazement I found that there are more than one format available for having smaller video size with almost similiar resolution and clarity.
When we "explore" the VCD we will find the movie part in MPEGAV folder in "*.DAT" format. Normally our Windows media Player doesn't recognise this DAT format as such. So we have to drag the files to WMP to view them.
I. Creating the Media file:-
I. Creating the Media file:-
The compression tools mostly support wide range of video formats like MPEG, AVI, Quicktime & so on. So your first step towards making smaller size movie starts with the creation of readable video file from VCD's DAT file. This can be done with the help of a software called "VCD gear" available at VCD Gear HomePage. Just download (2.4 MB) and "unzip" the file to a folder, create a shortcut on desktop to the "VCD Gear" exe file.
1. Click the VCD gear button
2. Choose dat->mpeg option from the drop down box.
3. "Load" the DAT file
4. Give the destination name and file, press "Start" and you go! All it takes is 5 minutes per VCD.
5. You'll find the MPEG format of the video at the destination.
6. Repeat the same procedure for the second part of the movie also.
II. Converting to other format
2. Choose dat->mpeg option from the drop down box.
3. "Load" the DAT file
4. Give the destination name and file, press "Start" and you go! All it takes is 5 minutes per VCD.
5. You'll find the MPEG format of the video at the destination.
6. Repeat the same procedure for the second part of the movie also.
II. Converting to other format
As said before, there are many formats available like DivX, Windows Media Video (WMV), MPG that support smaller sizes. Some conversion softwares are avaialble but comes with a price tag. From the freeware & free plugins like Virtual Dub, the "proper" procedures to create them with available plugins is bit cumbersome to explain and you can find it in this page:-
Nicky Digital Solutions Page which served as my first source of tutorial on this topic. But to keep things simple, I prefer to "join" both the video files and I decide on output what format it should be. You will need this free software called "MediaJoin (3.6 MB)" from MystikMedia. To convert a single file, I suggest you create an empty file of small clip of 10 seconds by using VCD clipper (discussed later) and "join" them.
1. Cick "Add" button and choose the video file to join.
2. Repeat the same procedure for selecting the second & subsequent parts of the video.
3. Click "Join" and you'll be prompted with the Output configuration. Choose the desired format (which one to choose will be discussed later at this article) and name the output & destination.
If the chosen parts are video, then you have the choices of "WMV", "AVI", ":MPEG-I" and "MPEG-II"
Which format is better?
There is nothing like that one particular format is the best and is subjected to individual perceptions. As far as I am concerned I am very much biased towards the WMV format, that offers excellent resolution video with the relatively smaller size than AVI or MPEG.
If you choose WMV format, the best suggested configuration goes like this. You can always try with various given configurations, but based on my experience, best choices go like these.
2. Repeat the same procedure for selecting the second & subsequent parts of the video.
3. Click "Join" and you'll be prompted with the Output configuration. Choose the desired format (which one to choose will be discussed later at this article) and name the output & destination.
If the chosen parts are video, then you have the choices of "WMV", "AVI", ":MPEG-I" and "MPEG-II"
Which format is better?
There is nothing like that one particular format is the best and is subjected to individual perceptions. As far as I am concerned I am very much biased towards the WMV format, that offers excellent resolution video with the relatively smaller size than AVI or MPEG.
If you choose WMV format, the best suggested configuration goes like this. You can always try with various given configurations, but based on my experience, best choices go like these.
1. If the movie is of action genre or rich photography, where there is more movements, go for "Video for Broadband NTSC 768Kbps". A movie of 2 hrs & 30 minutes may fit in one VCD with a file size of 680 ~ 700 MB. If the movie is still more longer, go for the same with 384 Kbps. After trying other frequencies, finally I encoded "Paheli" movie in 768Kbps ~ 684 MB because of its painiting like visuals.
2. If the movie is a drama based with more emphasis on expressions and lesser camera movements, choose "Video for Broadband NTSC 256Kbps" a 2 1/2 hour movie will be encoded in 170 ~ 230 Mb. My encoded file of "My wife's murder" with a running time of 1 hrs & 50 minutes was mere 168 MB while "Murder (2 hrs & 26 min) " was about 230 MB. The general size for this configuration is like 90 MB per hour of video.
3. Sometimes even the "Original" VCD has poor encoded clips, in such cases go for "Video for Broadband NTSC 384Kbps" even for the dramas. In this case, my source of inspiration "Ninne Pelladtha" which was the guinea pig for all of my testings, I finally settled at 384Kbps with a file size of 375 MB, same goes for "Niram" with 350 MB. Infact the encoded version of "Niram" had the least or almost no difference from the original VCD quality.
DIV Format:
If you have decided to try the DivX format, you'll need the DivX plugins to enable playback of DivX clips in Windows Media Player.
Encoding Configurations goes like this:-
For Video Codec, choose "DivX ;-) MPEG-4 Low Motion" and for Audio Codec, choose "MPEG Layer-3". This configuration normally works by encoding a movie of 2 hrs 10 minutes to about a large size of 580 MB, and also the quality leaves a lot to be desired. So I personally don't recommend this format.
Trimming the videos:
We may need to encode certain parts of the movie or song only, or particular segment of the video. How to seperate it? Here comes handy a small software called "VCD Clipper (662 KB Zip file, Google search for its location....)" basically to cut from VCD. [ Since it works on DAT file only, for a MPEG clip to be chopped, it needs to be converted into DAT. VCD Gear can do it for you. Choose "mpeg -> DAT" format and proceed as usual.
To cut the clip, open the DAT clip, when the needed starting point comes, in the "Clip" menu, choose "Select Start" and at the desired end point, in the "Clip Menu" choose "Select End". Now in the "File" menu, click "Save", you'll be prompted for a destination in your Hard Disk. You got the desired "DAT" clip and proceed to MPEG as usual with VCD gear.
One Major Hitch in the whole process..... :-( Since the video files are encoded on frame to frame basis, the time taken to encode the file is equal or more than the duration of the clip. Say... to encode a 2 1/2 hr movie, it will take anything between 3 ~ 3 1/2 hrs to create a file. Thats why I had given the "Presets" based on my experiences. (Normally I initiate the encoding process before going to bed at night, so that it will be completed at its own pace without straining me)
I hope this article will be useful when you share the marriage videos & your picnic videos over the net. And Video Blogging is catching up fastly on the net, so when you want to post your video blog over the net, this articlew will surely be useful. My previous article on online file storage will be helpful in hosting your small video clips.
I hope this article will be useful when you share the marriage videos & your picnic videos over the net. And Video Blogging is catching up fastly on the net, so when you want to post your video blog over the net, this articlew will surely be useful. My previous article on online file storage will be helpful in hosting your small video clips.
